I have traveled widely and here is what I do. I carry a days worth of cash, my camera, and sometimes a credit card in a cross body bag (PacSafe). I keep the cash and credit card in a zippered pocket in the bag and I safety pin the zipper pulls together. When I am on a bus/metro or in a crowded place...

Thanks everyone for your input. Prudence- I can roll the lump sum into my IRA so no immediate taxes. Valuethinker- I am currently single, so no need to worry about survivor benefits. I have ~ 1.6 million in other assets. Checking with immediateannunites.com the lump sum would buy an equivalent annui...

Carl 53- I thank you for your reply. You are right I meant PBGC, I alway seem to get the initials confused. Thanks also for the link, I will check that out. To answer your questions: I am single. My pension is currently 95% funded, so that is reassuring. I feel the employer I worked for is secure, a...

I am very recently retired and need to make a final decision on my pension payout within the next week I have read through several threads here and on earlyretirement.org. I have gotten some great feedback on the earlyretirement forum but thought I would post here also. The more input the better. Be...

Sorry to be so late in responding to everyone's feedback. Life got in the way. I greatly appreciate the responses. Yes, I know I am very lucky. My planned expenses are pre-tax, with tax they would be ~90k/yr. This includes a generous travel budget. So spending would be ~ 20k greater than my pension ...

I have been working on investment policy statement for my retirement years, as I will be retiring at the end of this year. I would greatly appreciate some feedback on my current planning and would like to ask some questions. I apologize in advance for the length of this post but I wanted to be sure ...

Sorry for the long absence. Work got very busy. I have had some time these last couple of days to work with various calculators. The calculator I ended up liking best is the Flexible Retirement Planner, it seemed to have the most flexibility so it was well named. :D Here is the link if anyone is not...

Hello everyone, I am currently trying to decide on a retirement date and have been exploring some of the online retirement calculators. I realize that they have limitations but am finding them helpful in getting a sense of where I am at. I have found firecalc and the Fidelity planner the most helpfu...

El Dorado Canyon is just south and west of Boulder. Nice trails, in fact is the end of the Mesa Trail. Lots of rock climbing there. Lefthand Canyon Road is a nice ride but I do not know the condition post flooding. +1, or is it 2, to the Brainard Lake area. There are some nice hikes in the Nederland...

Here are some other ideas for you. Take a mountain shuttle (or drive) up to Breckinridge and stay there. You can get around the area by the Summit Express bus if you don't want to drive. Lots of nice hikes in the area and a cute town. If you drive go over Loveland Pass, the exit is just before the t...

Thank you Watty. We will take a look at the Target Retirement Income Fund. Hopefully she will live many more years. . She is quite healthy and active now. She does have pretty good long term care insurance, however the preminums seem to be going up and up.

I am helping my 81 year old mother re-invest her funds now that she is out of her previous high expense investments. After the feedback from my earlier post most of her IRA funds have now been moved to a Vanguard brokerage account and are sitting in a MMF there. (Thanks to all who responded :D ). Ne...

Thanks again for the replies. So as it stands now I think I will recommend to her that she transfer the IRA funds (with the Stable Asset fund) to Vanguard and keep the life insurance. We have called twice now on the IRA deferred annuity and have been told there are no fees at this point. I do wonder...

Mel, thank you so much for responding. Interesting. Sounds like it would be best to move the IRA funds to Vanguard along with everything else as the investment itself is confusing. All the other funds in the IRA are high cost so it was the only potential keeper. Plus it will simplify things even fur...

I am helping my 81 year old mother with her portfolio. We are in the process of rolling most of her current high cost IRA funds to Vanguard and liquidating her individual stocks. I will be posting a full portfolio review shortly. She has the following 3 assets that I am not that familiar with and I ...

Thanks Retiredjg. That is my goal in helping her with this. We have started the process of moving her funds to Vanguard. When everything is there I will post some tentative portfolios for critique. She has also liquidated some stocks that she had which I am very glad about (the taxable assets noted ...

Thanks to all of you who have replied. I will discuss the options with my mother and have her start the process of rolling over the funds to Vanguard. Good to know about Edward Jones, it was a recommendation from someone else! :? I figured it would not be the best option but thought I would ask. I l...

My mother and I recently reviewed her finances and are thinking they could be much simplified. I am still a novice with all of this so I am asking all of you “wise ones” for help. Personally I think her portfolio is too aggressive for her age and her goal which is to “not run out of funds”. Knowing ...

Thanks to both of you for your replies. @JWNearlyRetired- sorry I made things more confusing in my attempt to clarify. I will try again below, hopefully more successfully :happy . I have found your input on other threads to be very helpful. @ Peter Foley- I will make an appointment with Schwab. I th...

Bump.I am hoping for some replies. I edited my initial post with updated information based on some further reading and research. @ Celia- Thanks for the link, it helped me clarify my target asset allocation.@ JW Nearly Retired- I was afraid that was the answer. Thanks for responding.

This is an edit of my initial post with my current thoughts and questions. I would greatly appreciate any input and I thank you in advance. I currently I understand investments just enough to be dangerous but I want to learn. My goal is to simplify my portfolio and position my funds for retirement i...